OK, so a conversation with Garbados/Diana on Gnu-Masto-Social-Don tied in with some deep-founded thoughts and has started a little fire somewhere inside me. She was talking about the “PTSD” effect on developers, through bad bosses and/or bad effects — the latter isn’t something I’ve been so close to, but makes me wonder how I’d react if, for instance, a library I’d contributed to had been used in warfare.
Sadly, bad bosses are more commonplace, though. Sometimes “bad” can mean “evil”, as in acting against others’ interests. Other times it can simply mean “misunderstanding” or “unlistening”, which can happen for more and less excusable reasons. Not all managers want to be managers. Real life gets in the way. And, importantly, TECH IS REALLY HARD TO UNDERSTAND. Realistically, if you haven’t worked 10+ years on a variety of tech projects, then you’re probably still getting your head round just what “tech” and its myriad systems actually means.
Tech is hard because systems are hard. And tech brings together all the systems — code, infrastructure, hardware, changes, as well as people and business value.
I’m at the point of my life where I feel like I’ve got a small grip on this. And the question I have right now is — how can we open up “tech” in terms of a wider audience understanding its challenges, nuances, effects and needs? How can we help “bad bosses” to navigate through the — let’s face it — infinitely confusing landscape of technology in a way that benefits both the people working in tech, as much as the organisation they work for?
I’m old enough to know that work has a huge emotional impact on our lives — that for many, our job is probably the most likely thing to influence whether we’re satisfied with life, or hating it. As my kids grow up, I can’t seriously look them in the eye and tell them that work is great, that if you just follow your passion, jobs will be brilliant. Because it’s more than that — it’s about finding a space that encourages a two-way relationship, a mutual symbiosis between worker and organisation. They cannot exist without each other.
As a Tech Director for a few years, one thing I’m annoyed I’ve never quite found time for is to have more time on team values. It strikes me that this is the one thing, the single discussion, that unites the people involved in “the craft”. if you hire passionate people (or if you can enthuse them to become passionate) then individual values soon emerge quickly. Not all of these will be shared across all the team, and balancing these is one of the broader jobs of the Tech Lead. But if things are important to the team — and, if done right, to the team as a whole — then perhaps these things need to be written up, shouted out, scrawled on walls, printed on banners.
Because understanding tech is hard, and if the team doesn’t do it, then nobody else will care.
This discussion, and the courage to do this — this is what we should be doing as part of our teams, a reignition of collectivism and strength in the team. Values, not (necessarily just) hours or pay, are what drives us, and what we should be taking an individual stand on. Values should be baked into the discussion from the moment we talk to a prospective new employer, or new employee — the up-front expectation that we take our art seriously, that we believe what we do has value to others, and that any compromise cannot be taken lightly.
And that’s just a start.
Originally published at Graham’s Weeknotes.
